


Family Crisis

by sanctuary_for_all



Series: Anywhere [5]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: And saving the day in style, Case Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Fix-it, Feels, Gen, M/M, working through some stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-07-20 12:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16136858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctuary_for_all/pseuds/sanctuary_for_all
Summary: When Matty goes missing, Mac and Jack head back into the field to help find her and stop the sale of deadly uranium.





	1. Chapter 1

Mac had once taken out an entire terrorist group with nothing but chewing gum, a car radio, and Jack, but Shakespeare was proving to be a much more difficult challenge. "Remind me why I'm supposed to care whether or not Hamlet really did go crazy during the course of the play?" he asked, tilting his head back against the wall so he would no longer have to look at his half-finished essay. "He's a _fictional_ character. What effect does this question have on _anything_?"

Jack, who was stretched out next to him on the bed mostly ignoring the Bruce Willis movie playing on his phone, just grinned. "How many fights did you start back in college asking English teachers questions like that?"

Mac's lips curved upward a little. "Why do you think I never got credit for those classes?" Then he sighed. "You know, we could both just pick a country in Africa and move there. I'm sure there's a nice little village somewhere that needs enough help with engineering and protection that they won't care if we don't have college degrees."

Looking amused but also surprisingly thoughtful, Jack set his phone down completely. "I'll go for that, but there's probably also a nice little village in South America that needs help with the same thing. There, we'd have a leg up because we know the language."

Mac grinned, giving him a quick kiss. "Even though you pretend not to."

Jack batted his eyelashes. "A lady doesn't reveal _all_ her secrets."

Mac laughed, turning back to his laptop, only to be stopped by the email alert that popped up in the corner of his laptop. The address was a string of numbers, long enough to suggest a randomly generated account, but it was the subject line that had him frowning. "Wolverines reported?" he read out loud, trying to put the words in some sort of context that would make sense.

Jack jerked like he'd been jabbed. "What did you say?"

"It's the subject line of the email someone just sent me." He clicked on it as Jack leaned over, but the only thing in the actual email was the letter U and the number 92. "That's the periodic number for uranium, but I don't—"

"Shit." Jack jumped off the bed, grabbing his pants and pulling them on. "Matty's in trouble."

Mac's tensed. "She sent the email?"

Jack nodded, reaching for his shoes. Mac shut his laptop, pulling on his own pants as Jack continued explaining. "It's a stupid joke song from an old Garfield comic. I used to drive Matty crazy singing it back when we were with the CIA, but there was one time when I thought it was the last message I was going to send her." He stopped, worry flooding his expression. "That time, it meant 'I'm not sure I'll make it out of this, so I'll need you to finish the job if I can't."

Mac went cold. "Shit." He pulled out his phone as Jack grabbed the truck keys, following him out the door. It was no use trying Matty – if she was to the point of sending cryptic emails, her phone was either at home or long gone – so he went straight for Bozer.

Jack glanced over at him as they climbed in the truck. "They might all be out on a mission together."

Mac shook his head, still listening to the ring. "If he knew it got bad enough for cryptic last messages, Bozer would have called us in by now." When it hit voicemail, he tried again. "Unless my father stopped him, in which case you might have to help me bury a body when this is all over."

Jack looked grim. "Done."

Finally, thankfully, the phone connected. "Mac, I'm sorry, but this really isn't the best—"

"Matty's in trouble." He pulled the phone away from his ear, put it on speaker so Jack could hear. "If we're reading her message right uranium is somehow involved."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. "Shit. Shit shit shit. She said she was taking some personal time, but she also said she'd be back three days ago. Leanna and I _knew_ we should be worried, but your dad wasn't and Matty is _absolutely_ the type to murder someone who interrupts her vacation."

"She's definitely not on vacation," Mac said grimly, trying not to think about what would have happened if Matty had tried to contact his father instead of him and Jack. How someone they cared about would be in danger, and they wouldn't even _know_. "I know the Phoenix Foundation has other techs, but is there any chance you could call in—"

This time, it was Bozer's turn to cut him off. "She's already here. I'll hand you over."

Jack frowned. "What's she doing back in L.A.? She said she was still in Atlanta _yesterday_ when we talked—"

"Feelings, Jack." That was Riley, sounding rushed. "Messy, complicated, awful feelings that I'd rather not talk about ever and we definitely don't have time to talk about right now. Bozer finally asked me to start poking around this morning, and the last trace I can find of Matty _anywhere_ is at the L.A. airport more than a week ago. Tell me you've got something I can work with."

"We do. Hopefully." Mac tensed, glancing over at Jack. "My father might not be happy with us coming in on this."

"Not that that's going to stop us," Jack added. "But you guys should have a heads up."

Riley took a deep breath. "Technically, I'm not in the line of fire, either."

There was the sound of a phone being passed, then Leanna is the one who spoke. "If we can get Matty back, we won't have to worry about Overwatch. I don't have the authority to send you the plane—"

"I know Matty's codes," Jack cut in. "It still might red flag Mac's dad, but it'll give us more time."

"Bozer said you were resourceful." A moment of amusement, quickly disappearing back under seriousness. "I guess now the only question is how fast you can get to the airport."

Mac took a deep breath as Jack stepped on the gas. "We're already on our way."


	2. Chapter 2

The flight seemed to take an eternity. Jack was so tense he was practically vibrating, a lack of information the only thing keeping him from commandeering the plane and flying off to save Matty right now. Mac kept a steadying hand on Jack's back, silently bracing himself to face everything he'd left behind. It was easier to focus on that than let himself dwell on the guilt coiling through his stomach, the knowledge that Matty might not be in this situation if he hadn't left and dragged Jack away with him.   
  
The rest of the team met them at the landing strip in L.A., immediately boarding the plane. "We decided it would be safer to take this show on the road," Bozer explained, a bag of equipment slung over his shoulder. "That way, if your dad tries to do something, we'll already be on the move."  
  
Something cold and hard sharpened inside Mac's chest. "If my father tries something, I'll take care of it."  
  
"Or I will," Jack added easily, taking the gun Leanna offered and tucking it into the waistband of his jeans. They had more guns on the plane, including much heavier artillery, but that would be saved until they had more of an idea what was going on. "If anyone's killing a government official this trip, it's going to be me."  
  
Mac knew he shouldn't be comforted by the comment, or the fact that he was the biggest reason James Macgyver could touch off that dark a response from Jack. But what should and shouldn't be didn't necessarily have anything to do with reality, and Mac was immensely grateful that Jack cared enough to get that angry on his behalf.   
  
Though now both he and Jack might have a new reason to be angry. There had to be a reason Matty felt like she had to keep whatever this was off book, which was why she'd gone in without backup. If his father had been the reason, and something happened to Matty because of it...  
  
"Let's keep the talk about actual treason to a minimum, if you don't mind." Leanna's voice was dry as she opened the door to the cockpit, signaling the plane to leave. They didn't know where they were going yet, but they all knew it wasn't safe to stay where they were.   
  
Only when she closed it again did she add, "not that it's off the table, but it's not the kind of plan you want to advertise in advance."  
  
"Forgive them both. They're out of practice." As the plane took off, Riley sat down at one of the computers and started typing. "After you guys called and upgraded the missing Matty situation to a full red alert, I did a deeper sweep of her computer and found a hidden drive." At her last keystroke, a series of what appeared to be .exe files popped up. "The problem is, the files seem to be named randomly and are all password protected." She opened one up at random to show them. "Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but with Matty..."  
  
"One keystroke out of place and she probably has something set up that'd wipe the entire damn thing," Jack said grimly. "But she sent Mac and me a message, and she knew either us or Bozer would bring Riley in. She knew we'd get here, which means she left us a clue to get to the next step."  
  
Catching sight of a particular file name, Mac's chest tightened. "Here." He pointed to a file named clipdepapel.exe. "Can you figure out when this was made?"  
  
Riley focused on it, understanding lighting her eyes. "Spanish for paperclip." She checked the file information, face lighting up in triumph. "Two days before Matty left. Now does anyone have an idea about the password?" She turned to Jack. "You know her best. Any sort of secret backstory clue only the two of you would know?"  
  
Behind him, Mac heard Leanna murmur to Bozer. "Paperclip?"  
  
"It's a whole thing Mac does sometimes," Bozer murmured back. "I'll fill you in on the details later."  
  
Jack's eyes were still on the screen, jaw tight. "'She wants us in faster than that," he said finally. "It's 'wolverines reported.'" He glanced over at Mac. "How was it spelled in the email?"  
  
Matty would absolutely pay attention to something like that. "Capital W."  
  
Riley typed the words in correctly. As soon as she hit enter, the screen instantly filled with photos, files, satellite images, and a variety of intel that at first glance seemed too much to be all related. Mac scanned everything, trying to put the pieces together, and when it all came together in his head he felt his stomach drop.   
  
From the expressions on everyone else's faces, they were seeing the larger picture as well. Leanna, leaning forward slightly, was the one who gave voice to it. "Someone's selling uranium, and a group of the most wanted criminals and terrorists in the world are all heading to Ecuador to bid on it."   
  
Riley started typing again. "I'll copy all this to my laptop, in case we get locked out of the system before we have the chance to look at it all."  
  
There was one thing Mac couldn't see in the information in front of him, but this time it was Bozer who said it. "What I want to know is why the hell she tried to do this on her own. I thought this was about some ex-boyfriend of hers who also smuggled diamonds or something, but this is big enough she could have brought the entire team in." He sounded nearly as angry as he did the first time he'd found out about Mac's secret life as a spy. "She _should_ have brought the entire team in."  
  
"It wasn't you guys she was keeping out of the way." Jack tapped a picture at a corner of the screen, and Mac went cold when he recognized Jonah Walsh, his father's former partner. "It was Mac's dad."  
  
Mac took a deep breath. This was just a more complicated logistical problem than he'd expected. That was all. "That means undercover is off the table. Walsh knows mine and Jack's faces personally, and I'm sure he's kept close enough track of my father to recognize the rest of you."  
  
Jack met Mac's eyes, stubbornness and something remarkably close to fear running just underneath the surface. "Mac..."  
  
He already knew what Jack was going to say, but he had to nip this in the bud now. If they were back in, they were in it together. "No." His voice was firm. "Where you go, I go."  
  
There was a moment where Jack looked like he wanted to argue, then he nodded. "Then I guess we're all going to Ecuador."  
  
Leanna laid a steadying hand on Bozer's back as she moved past him. "I'll tell the pilot where we're going."

**Author's Note:**

> Come check out my [original fiction,](https://jennifferwardell.wixsite.com/mybooks) my [blog,](http://jennifferwardell.blogspot.com) or say hi to me on [Tumblr](http://sanctuaryforalluniverses.tumblr.com)!


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